The muscle hurting all of our shoulders and necks

The pec minor is a muscle that gets a lot of attention from physical therapists. It’s a muscle that connects your scapula also known as your shoulder blade to the front of your rib cage around your chest area. It’s famous for tipping your scapula forward. And often times due our modern lifestyle. This gets too stiff because we’re always in that position.  If you have a stiff pec minor this can cause a whole host of issues.  From putting pressure on your neck, to making it hard to raise your arm, to compressing your nerve. Also, it just makes your posture look worse

However, If we loosen the pec minor we can see that we get way more range of motion in the shoulder, take pressure of the neck, and free up tension in the nerves going to our hand.

The first thing I like to do is stretch this muscle, by placing my hand against the door and stepping forward while rolling my shoulder blades back. After that, I like to strengthen my muscles to keep my posture in a good position, so that muscle stays nice and supple moving forward.

What are the benefits of manual therapy?

Manual therapy is a term physical therapists use when we talk about doing a hands-on service to our patients. This can look like soft tissue massage, joint mobilizations, “adjustments”, nerve mobilizations, stretching and so much more. Manual therapy is a skilled and trained procedure your physical therapist may perform.

Recently many physical therapists have moved away from manual therapy because they feel it gets over-perscirbed and their patients feel reliant on them. While that may be true it is still a very useful and power asset to the rehabilitation process.

Manual therapy has a lot of benefits but should be done when your healthcare provider deems it appropriate. Not everyone should receive the same kind of manual therapy because everyone has a different context, status, and goals with their health. For instance, two people can both have limited hip mobility, but one person may need stretching, and the other person may need joint mobilizations. The physical therapist should be able to run tests to differentiate which ones will help.

Now let’s address some of the benefits of manual therapy.

Reduced pain

Improved flexibility

Decreased swelling

Improved nerve mobility

Improved joint play

Muscle inhibition/excitation

Decreased muscle tension

Improved bloodflow

There are so many benefits to manual therapy, specially if it’s target at specific needs and matches your current presentation. Physical therapists can be excellent providers for manual therapy as they have a great understanding of anatomy and biomechanics.Talk with your physical therapist if it’s appropriate for you.